60: Four Prepositions for EdTech When we think about computers and information technology (ICT), and the models that educators have developed to use ICT in classrooms, it seems we can capture the nature of students’ and teachers’ interaction with it with four prepositions. Each is described and illustrated in this post. Teaching about computers- When Read More
Month: February 2018
MOOC’s
A colleague asked a question… she suggested I share the answer… So, I have several students taking Coursera courses…. also EdX and Udemy… there are other MOOC providers out there as well. The model for MOOC’s (massive open online courses) is generally the same regardless of the provider: 1) Some MOOC’s have start dates and Read More
ISBN’s and Citation Management Software
A colleague asked a question… she suggested I share my answer… An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a wonderful tool for writers and researchers to understand and use. The 13-digital number is unique to each book published, and it is associated with metadata about the book. Metadata includes much that writers care about when Read More
What the Tofflers Wrote About Rates of Change
In 2006, futurists Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler captured the relative speed of change throughout society with this scale: businesses appear to be adopting new information technologies and adapting to them at 100 miles per hour, with other organizations (such as professional organizations and non-governmental organizations) moving almost as quickly; families in the United States Read More
Semiotic Democracy
Palfrey and Gasser (2016) used the term semiotic democracy to describe the effects of participatory content creation on society. They observed, “any citizen with the skills, time, and access to digital technologies to do so may reinterpret and reshape the stories of the day” (p. 233). It appears high school students are providing us with Read More
Frameworks Defined
61: Frameworks Defined A continuum can be created with educational scholars placed at one extreme and educators at the other; educational theory is placed on the extreme with scholars and models of instruction are placed on the extreme with practitioners. Between these two extremes, there exists a gap that must be filled if instruction is Read More
Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media
Education and the models and strategies educators use to create learning environments are grounded in ideas about how people learn. Ideas about learning are grounded in cognitive and learning sciences, and also on ideas about the organization and structure of knowledge. Connectionism is an idea that is gaining popularity and influence in thinking about teaching Read More
Putt’s Law & School IT
The situation regarding IT management in many schools is well-captured by the hypothetical (and sarcastic) Putt’s Law. According to Archibald Putt, “Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand” (Putt, 2006, p. 7). Further, Putt articulated a corollary, Read More
What Michael Crichton Wrote about Computers
Michael Crichton (who would later author Jurassic Park among other well-known novels) wrote Electronic Life in 1983; the book was his response to friends and acquaintances who were constantly seeking his advice on buying, setting up, and using their first computers and that would become embedded in the culture as computers gained acceptance and penetrated Read More
Progressive Discourse
Appropriate Proper Reasonable As a wicked problem, the process of education—and thus the planning for education—appears different depending on many personal and societal factors that influences one’s perspective. (Stakeholder groups are commonly identified to categorize those with different perspectives on education; but that does not capture the individualized nature of one’s perspective, nor does the Read More